Fort Hare University
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| Motto | In lumine tuo videbimus lumen ("In your light we shall see the light") |
|---|---|
| Type | Public university |
| Established | 1916 |
| Chancellor | Thembile Skweyiya |
| Vice-Chancellor | Sakhela Buhlungu |
| Students | 13,331 (2015) |
| Location |
Main campus: Alice Other: Bhisho East London, Eastern Cape, South Africa Coordinates: 32°47′13.4″S 26°50′56.7″E / 32.787056°S 26.849083°E |
| Website | http://www.ufh.ac.za/ |
The University of Fort Hare is a public university in Alice, Eastern Cape, South Africa.
It was a key institution of higher education for black Africans from 1916 to 1959. It offered a Western-style academic education to students from across sub-Saharan Africa, creating a black African elite. Fort Hare alumni were part of many subsequent independence movements and governments of newly independent African countries.
In 1959, the university was subsumed by the apartheid system, but it is now part of South Africa's post-apartheid public higher education system.
Originally, Fort Hare was a British fort in the wars between British settlers and the Xhosa of the 19th century. Some of the ruins of the fort are still visible today, as well as graves of some of the British soldiers who died while on duty there.
Missionary activity under James Stewart led to the creation of a school for missionaries from which at the beginning of the 20th century the university resulted. In accord with its Christian principles, fees were low and heavily subsidised. Several scholarships were also available for indigent students.
It was a key institution in higher education for black Africans from 1916 to 1959. It offered a Western-style academic education to students from across sub-Saharan Africa, creating a black African elite. Fort Hare alumni were part of many subsequent independence movements and governments of newly independent African countries.
Several leading opponents of the apartheid regime attended Fort Hare, among them Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo of the African National Congress, Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party, Robert Sobukwe of the Pan Africanist Congress, Desmond Tutu, Kenneth Kaunda, Julius Nyerere, Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo. Mandela who studied Latin and physics there for almost two years in the 1940s, left the institution as a result of a conflict with a college leader. He later wrote in his autobiography that “For young black South Africans like myself, it was Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Yale, all rolled into one.”
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